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Marie is a schoolteacher who is deeply in love with her boyfriend, a model, who does not have sex with her. She explores increasingly risky sexual encounters with other men, including a BDSM relationship with a member of staff who works at the same school. Though she is impregnated by her boyfriend, in the end she kills him.

Romance was shown in mainstream cinemas in Europe. In the U.S., the original version is unrated, and an edited version received an R rating. In March 2004, the unedited film was broadcast late at night on German public TV, leading to some protests. The film has also been shown on the Australian cable TV network "World Movies" in its uncut form. In Canada, particularly in Alberta and the Maritimes, the sexuality was seen as gratuitous to the film and it was given an A rating and XXX rating in those regions. In June 2008, the original, unedited version of Romance was shown in The Netherlands on Dutch public TV by VPRO as part of an Erotica series of arthouse films.

↑Anne Gillain, "Profile of a Filmmaker: Catherine Breillat" Beyond French Feminisms: debates on women, Politics and Culture in France, 1981 - 2001, edited by Roger Célestin et al. New York: Macmillan (2003): 202. Catherine Breillat's "film Romance had received a lot of praise -- and criticism -- the previous year because of her use of a porn-film actor and a scene showing a nonsimulated sexual act, including a shot of an erection in the foreground."